Lennart Nilsson Award is awarded to Xiaowei Zhuang
29 june 2017.
Xiaowei Zhuang is the recipient of the 2017 Lennart Nilsson Award for making breakthrough discoveries in the beautiful world of cell biology, literally making the invisible visible, with the STORM technique that was developed in her laboratory.
Xiaowei Zhuang is the David B. Arnold Professor of Science at Harvard University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. In 2006, she pioneered a method that would go on to revolutionize the world of fluorescence microscopy. She developed a single-molecule-based super-resolution light microscopy method called “Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy” or STORM. It overcame the diffraction limit and extended the spatial resolution of light microscopy by an order of magnitude to a few tens of nanometers. The resolution of STORM was further extended by her laboratory to a few nanometers, nearly 100 times higher than conventional diffraction-limited light microscopy. Xiaowei Zhuang has since been using STORM to illuminate the beautiful and small world of biology in the most unexpected ways.
Now Xiaowei Zhuang is awarded the 2017 Lennart Nilsson Award for her discoveries.
Motivation:
Super-resolution light microscopy techniques have revolutionized the life sciences. With the STORM technique that was developed in Dr Xiaowei Zhuang’s laboratory, she has made breakthrough discoveries in the beautiful world of cell biology, literally making the invisible visible. Her images represent a unique combination of technical mastery, frontline science, and visual esthetics, fitting perfectly in the tradition of Lennart Nilsson.
The Lennart Nilsson Award Foundation was established in 1998 in recognition of the world-renowned Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson and his extraordinary body of work. The main aim is to promote education, training and research within the medical, biological and engineering sciences through the use of images. This is achieved through the Lennart Nilsson Award, an international award bestowed annually upon an individual in recognition of outstanding contributions within the realm of scientific photography.
For more information, please contact
Xiaowei Zhuang
Tel: + 1 617 496-9558
Email: zhuang@chemistry.harvard.edu
For research images, please contact the Press Office:
+46 8 524 860 77
pressinfo@ki.se
http://ki.se/pressroom
Karolinska Institutet is one of the world’s leading medical universities. Its vision is to significantly contribute to the improvement of human health. Karolinska Institutet accounts for the single largest share of all academic medical research conducted in Sweden and offers the country’s broadest range of education in medicine and health sciences. The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet selects the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine.
